


hell is a teenage girl

by adreadfulidea



Category: IT (2017)
Genre: F/F, Horror, Internalized Homophobia, Men Being Creeps
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-16 20:46:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14173062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adreadfulidea/pseuds/adreadfulidea
Summary: Gretta Keene, in transition.





	hell is a teenage girl

**Author's Note:**

> This may turn out to be part of a series, but I make no promises.

 

 

 

 

Here are the things that Gretta Keene is not going to do:

She’s not going to let the first asshole that shows interest in her feel her up in the back of his shitty car. She’s not going to get married right out of high school and start popping out kids. She’s not going to end up working at Reny’s helping middle-aged women find shoes in a eight-wide. She’s not going to sit around the house smoking until her voice sounds like someone took sandpaper to it and the walls turn yellow. She’s not going to get stuck in fucking Derry.

She’s not going to end up like her Mom.

 

 

For the year of 1988-1989, September to June, Gretta was the most popular girl in her grade. And why not? You didn’t have to be that nice or that rich or even that pretty. You just had to know who to smile at and who to stomp down. Survival of the fittest, like Mr. Thibedeau was always saying in biology.

Her friends were all kids from Derry’s elite, if you could call anyone in their crappy little town that. Their parents were people who went to college. Doctors and notaries and minor local politicians. They wore the all right clothes. Some of them had boyfriends with cars. Not like Bowers and his merry band of fuck-ups; _good_ cars, ones that didn’t leak oil all over the place or die in the middle of the highway. They wore lipgloss every day and stole cigarettes out of their Mom’s purses. They talked their older brothers into buying them a flask and passed it around, giggling, after school. It burned when it went down but it blunted all of Gretta’s hard edges. Even the sky seemed softer, rolling past as they drove home, Marcia’s brother behind the wheel smelling like weed and cologne his parents bought him. She was sick the next day and told her parents she had the flu.

They were girls hovering on the edge of something, still palatable to their doting mothers but catching the eyes of boys too old for them. Everything moved too fast or too slow. They lived in two worlds.

Beverly Marsh wasn’t one of those girls.

Beverly Marsh had a chronically underemployed father and a mother that had been gone for years. People said she ran off with a trucker, which would be appropriately white-trash. They never had enough money. Her clothes were secondhand. She liked to draw outfits, stuff she couldn’t afford maybe, in the margins of her notebook. Gretta saw them back when she sat behind her in history. Boys looked at Beverly Marsh. They looked a lot. But she didn’t look back.

They had gym class together. When she ran across the field outside, rolling a soccer ball in front of her, the sunlight made her hair look like it was on fire. Gretta could always spot her right away, even when she wasn’t trying to.

Beverly always got picked last for the teams.

“So my Mom wants to go to Hawaii this summer,” Sally said, popping her gum and applying her mascara in the bathroom mirror. Her parents didn’t let her wear makeup yet so she had to wait until school started to put it on.

“Hawaii is like, so lame,” Marcia said. “So last year.”

“I know, right?” said Sally. “That’s what I think. I want to go to Australia but Daddy says it’s too expensive.” She turned to Gretta. “What do you think?”

Gretta was standing by the window with her arms crossed. “I don’t care,” she said. “They both suck.”

Marcia and Sally exchanged a look. “Are you still mad about that?” Marcia asked.

The incident she referred to had happened that morning in Algebra. Their fucking teacher made Gretta go up to the board and attempt a problem. She hadn’t been listening to the lecture and hadn’t been able to do anything with the confusing jumble of letters and numbers in front of her. She’d only been able to stand there, chalk in hand, feeling her face go red. He’d left her frozen as a statue for five whole minutes before he told her to sit down. “Perhaps you ought to pay attention,” he’d said, snidely, before given her permission to slump back to her desk. “Instead of gossiping with your friends.” The class had been so quiet afterwards. Gretta’s nails left pink half-moons on the surface of her palms. She didn’t take a single page of notes, purely out of spite.

“Wouldn’t you be?” Gretta asked. He’d all but called her stupid to her face. Fuck him. _Fuck_ him.

“I wouldn’t care,” Marcia said, airily. “When are we ever going to use algebra, anyway?”

They went out into the hall, shoulder to shoulder, making the other kids get out of their way. It was gratifying, watching them dodge and duck. Hoping they’d be noticed or hoping they wouldn’t. All except one. Beverly was heading their way. She met Gretta’s gaze flatly. It wasn’t quite aggression. It was something else. Disinterest.

Gretta slammed into her as she passed, sending her books spinning out of her hands to the ground.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Beverly said. She stooped to get her books, interrupting the flow of traffic. “What the hell is your problem?”

“Whoops,” Gretta said, smirking. “Try not to be so clumsy, Bevvie.” Her friends laughed. They continued on down the hall and she didn’t let herself look back once.

 

 

Gretta slept with the blankets pulled tight around her all that year, even after the winter had faded away and they were headed towards summer. She kept getting cold in the middle of the night. There was some issue with the heating. She’d wake up and there would be frost all over the windows. Or it looked like frost. Almost frost. But it was wetter, somehow. Smeared across the glass like fingers had put it there. Like the water that made it had been dirty.

It was always gone by the time morning came, and no one else ever knew what she was talking about.

One night, just as she was dropping off, the phone rang. She was allowed to have one in her room because her parents were tired of listening to her one-sided conversations in the kitchen. She picked it up without thinking.

“Hello?” she said, fumbling for the lamp on instinct.

“Gretta?” the guy on the other end of the line said.

She froze, her hand still in the air. “What?”

“Gretta,” he breathed out, and it sounded so weird, thick and throaty, like he was dying, or like he was jerking off. She thought of a throat filled with blood and didn’t know why. “Gretta. GrettagrettagrettagrettaGRETTA —”

She slammed the phone down, her skin crawling. For the rest of the night she sat up, lights blazing, reading comics she would have sworn she’d outgrown to calm down. She kept waiting for the phone to ring again. It never did.

When she morning came she unplugged it and brought it downstairs. “I don’t need this anymore,” she said, and handed it off to her father without further explanation.

 

 

Marcia took a huge, juicy bite of her cheeseburger. Sally watched her with open envy because she was on a diet.

“I heard,” she started to say, but her mouth was full.

“Jesus, Marcia,” Gretta complained. “ _Chew_.”

Marcia shrugged and sucked back a huge swallow of cherry Coke. “What? I’m hungry. Anyway. I hear she was doing Bowers and half his greaseballs. Gross, huh?”

It was a spring day that miraculously had no rain at all. Just white fluffy clouds and long stretches of interrupted sun. They’d spent the day at the shore, skipping rocks across the water and eating salt-water taffy. Now it was evening, and Sally was treating her friends to dinner. Her Mom just got promoted at work. She had a new bicycle, a racing one, that she’d showed off that morning. Her family was very physically active, probably because both her parents were pediatricians.

“Uh huh,” said Gretta, dubiously. “And when is this supposed to have happened? Who told you?”

Marcia rolled her eyes. “How am I supposed to know when it happened? I’m not following her around. Anyway, Hockstetter told me.”

“Was that before or after he showed you his box of dead flies?” Sally asked, and they all dissolved in laughter.

“You have to admit he’s not the most reliable witness,” Gretta said, after. “And he _does_ follow Bowers around. Like a puppy with a head injury. It freaks me out.”

“He freaks everyone out,” Marcia said. “But why are you defending _her_?”

Gretta paused with the glass rim of her Coke bottle touching her teeth. Original flavor, not cherry. “I’m not,” she said. She’d just have thought Beverly had better taste. Practically anyone would. That was all. That was why thinking about it made her stomach clench in disgust.

“She doesn’t have any friends,” Sally reasoned. “Probably all they had to do was promise to be nice to her.”

Gretta put her Coke down. It had gone off or something, sugar laying on her tongue like an oil slick. “Henry Bowers,” she said, screwing up her face. “God. How desperate do you have to be?”

 

 

“Slut,” she whispered, the next time she passed Beverly in the hall. Just loud enough to be unmistakable. Just loud enough that their eyes met for a second.

 

 

They drove down West Broadway, Gretta in the back seat with the headphones of her walkman over her ears. Her father was lecturing her about her marks, which was nothing new. “Do you want to get held back again, Gretta?” he asked, like failing the third grade was going to define her forever, and that was her cue to rewind the tape and crank up the Vanity. Problem solved.

But the car rolled to a stop not long after. They weren’t at their door. Gretta had been too absorbed in her music to see the lights at first, but there they were: red and blue, flashing against the rain-slick surfaces of the houses.

“God,” her mother said. “Another one.”

Gretta looked out the window. There was a woman kneeling in her driveway, hugging herself, rocking back and forth. Her mouth gaping open in horror and grief.

Another missing kid. But in a neighborhood that mattered, this time. Gretta could see the silhouette of Butch Bowers standing over the woman. Probably wondering what she was bawling about. She doubted that asshole understood basic human emotion. If his son disappeared tomorrow he’d probably throw a party.

Well. So would half of Derry. But they’d have _reason_ to.

“I hear he used to beat his wife up,” Gretta said, apropos of nothing.

Her father twisted around in his seat, his eyebrows coming together. “Who?”

“Him,” she said. “Mr. Bowers.” And the whole time she was thinking — god, take her inside. Get her out of the rain. Get her a sedative. _Do_ something.

“That’s a terrible rumour to be repeating,” her father said, shifting back into lecture mode. “No one outside of the situation knows anything about it.”

Gretta groaned and fell heavily back against the car seat. “Whatever,” she said. “I’m just saying. Would you want that to be the guy looking for your missing kid?”

“I’m sure the police will do all they can.”

“If it gets me.” she said, “I sure hope you rely on better than Butch Bowers.”

Her mother’s head turned slowly towards her. Gretta didn’t like the expression on her face, or in her eyes. It was the confused pain of someone dealing with a long buried memory. “It,” she said, her voice breaking. “ _It_ —”

And then she shook herself, sharply, and everything went back to normal. “Nothing is going to get you,” she said, firm in her confidence. The police cleared off the road. They continued home.

“It’s a serial killer,” said Sally, later that night, on the phone when they were both supposed to be asleep. “Obviously.”

Gretta was still mulling the subject over the next day on her walk home. That must have been why she took a wrong turn. Why she ended up in front of 29 Neibolt Street.

The house rose above her like an undead thing. It didn’t look right, never had, never seemed like it was actually abandoned the way it was supposed to be. The dark in the house wasn’t only dark. It watched you as you went by. It was an expectant darkness, a solid darkness. Like rotting velvet. Gretta’s hands curled around the straps of her backpack as her eyes searched the empty windows. What she was looking for, she couldn’t have said.

When she was little, she and her friends had dared each other to run up the steps and ring the doorbell. There was no one to answer and they all knew it, but that was the game. Run up the stairs and ring the doorbell. Only Gretta had ever made it. She’d gloated in the daytime, but after night fell she’d slept in her parent’s room for a week. She kept having a nightmare about falling down a hole that had no end.

The wind rattled the loose gate. The house creaked. And a voice said, “Gretta.”

It came from inside the house. “Gretta,” the voice said again, shivering with pain or fear. “Gretta, I’m hurt. Please help me —”

And oh god, that was Sally, it sounded like Sally, like something trying to be Sally, and Gretta’s feet were numb and they were frozen and she couldn’t move, and yes, she had to go inside, she should be going inside —

A hand landed on her shoulder. She screamed and tried to pull away. The knuckles tightened, bunching in her shirt.

“Hey,” said Al Marsh. “It’s only me.”

“Mr. Marsh,” Gretta said, her heart pounding. She was breathing like she had just run a marathon and her eyes were watering. “You scared the shi— you scared me!”

He smiled down at her, lopsided. His hand didn’t move from her shoulder.

The moment went on for way too long. There was something wrong with the way he was looking at her. His eyes lowered, fixed on her face, unblinking. The smile on his face was almost gentle. That made it worse, somehow. Gretta felt cold. She started to get scared again. She started to wonder if she could get away if she needed to. If anyone would hear her if she yelled.

His grip loosened. He patted her shoulder and then dropped his hand down by his side.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said.

Gretta ran. She called her Dad from a gas station and asked to be picked up. The attendant let her sit behind the counter and she watched the door the whole time, tracking who came in and out. But Al Marsh hadn’t followed her. No one had.

 

 

Gretta sat in the kitchen with the phone to her ear. Her parents were asleep. The person she was trying to call probably was, too.

It wasn’t hard to find the number. She went to the pharmacy and looked through the prescriptions on file. An ear infection two years ago. There it was.

“Hello?” Beverly said.

Gretta was so relieved it was her who picked up that she felt kind of dizzy. She’d known she was taking a risk, calling at all. She closed her eyes and tried to think of something to say. Something that would make any of this make sense, would make the shattered remnants of this year reform in her mind into a picture that made sense.

I ran into your father and he freaked me out. I ran into your father and I wonder if he might be the serial killer, you know, the one that’s taking all those kids. I heard a house say my name. I don’t feel safe. I ran into your father and and and —

“Hello?” Beverly said, more annoyed this time.

Gretta hung up.

 

 

Summer came to Derry the way it always did, the showers suddenly drying up and leaving behind a riot of green and flowers and a heat that settled over the town like a glimmering net. It seemed to last forever and yet was never long enough. Summertime was strange time, in Derry, and that summer was stranger than most. Sally left for Hawaii with her family. Marcia was going to Italy to stay with her cosmopolitan grandmother. And Gretta stuck around, bored and occupying herself by practicing her slapshot in the yard or sneaking into the movie theater. She could pay. She just didn’t want to.

The disappearances trailed off. Maybe it was over. Maybe the culprit had moved on, or it had really been accidents or runaways after all. She looked back over her shoulder just in case. She spent a lot of time hanging out at the pharmacy, reading magazines she grabbed off the stand, where it was air conditioned and familiar. Gretta wanted familiarity, that summer. When she saw Bill Denbrough and his weird little friends come in — they always seemed to move as a group, that crowd — she experienced a sudden longing for her _own_ friends, a pang she couldn’t exactly explain. They were very far away from her, in better and more interesting places than this. She wasn’t allowed to call because of the long distance charges her father said were unnecessary. She got postcards instead.

She left the store, going out back by the garbage dumpster and the staff parking. The sun beat down on the back of her neck. Her hockey stick was in the back of her father’s car, so she got it out and bounced an empty soda can back and forth off the stucco wall. The door opened, and she looked up expecting to see one of the cashiers leaving for their break or for lunch.

It was Patrick Hockstetter, sucking on the dog-end of a cigarette that she was sure he’d picked up off the ground or something gross. His mouth twitched into a wide, mirthless smile when he saw her.

“You’re not supposed to use that door,” she said. “It’s only for staff.” She slammed the can off the wall with more force than was needed, letting him know what would happen if he tried anything. Gretta had the fastest stick on her team. The hardest, too, if she needed it. She had sweat running down her back and goosebumps on her arms. God, she hated him. She wished he’d drop off the face of the earth.

“Soooorrrry,” he said, stretching the word out like it was taffy. He kept staring at her, just standing there, listless as an earthworm on the sidewalk after it rained.

She waited him for him to say something. He always did, and it was always disgusting, and then she would threaten to scream or have him arrested or kick his ass, and the cycle of life would continue. Ugh. Why were all the boys in Derry such lab specimens?

“Saw your father in there,” he said, and Gretta blinked. Whatever she had been bracing herself for, it wasn’t that.

“Uh,” she said, “yeah? He works here. He owns it.”

Hockstetter dropped the cigarette on the ground. He exhaled what was left of the smoke. “He’s all over Bev Marsh,” he said, and it was as if he had started speaking in tongues. The words made sense but not in that combination.

“You’re full of shit,” Gretta scoffed. “She’s not even in the store.”

“Yes she is,” Hockstetter said. “Over by the T-A-M-P-A-X.”

Fucking freak. He probably hung out in the aisle, waiting for girls to walk by.

“So?” Gretta said. “Are you gonna ask her to borrow one?”

“Maybe he is,” Hockstetter said. “Maybe he’s gonna ask for a blowjob instead of her pocket change.”

“Fuck you,” Gretta said. Her face was reddening and her hand was tight around the handle of her hockey stick. “Don’t talk about my Dad like that.”

“You should see them,” he said, and fluttered his eyelashes grotesquely. “Oh Mr. Keene,” he said, in a falsetto, tilting his head back, “you’re soooo handsome. Have I ever told you I like older men…”

Gretta hit him. It was not a planned gesture. She didn’t think about it first. She just did it, slamming the business end of the stick down on his knee as hard as she could. He yelled, showing every one of his fillings, and fell down clutching at his leg. And then Gretta, gripping her hockey stick like it was going to save her life, ran like hell.

She almost collided with her father, who was coming out the front door. “Sweetheart,” he said, looking startled. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Can we go for lunch?”

“I — sure,” he said. “Burgers okay? Or did you want something else?”

“Burgers are fine,” she said. She half expected Belch’s car to come roaring around the corner, chasing them, but it never did. Her father brought their station wagon around the front without mentioning an incapacitated boy that had been back there. So presumably Hockstetter had limped off somewhere to lick his wounds.

They passed Beverly on their way. She had a Keene’s bag dangling from one hand. Gretta’s father honked the horn and waved. Beverly waved back, but only after a period of hesitation. The smile on her face looked frozen.

 

 

A week after someone left a dead skunk on their porch in the middle of the night, but that was the worst that ever came of it.

 

 

Gretta flipped through her magazine and cracked her gum. It was too hot to be outside, the atmosphere pea-soup thick with humidity. Gretta wilted and took refuge in the air conditioning. She thought about going to a movie, asking her Dad to drive her so she wouldn’t have to walk, but ennui prevented her. Besides, there was nothing good playing. Watching movies by herself was starting to make her feel like a nobody. Even popcorn couldn’t soothe her spirit. She was counting down the days until Sally and Marcia got back, though she would never tell _them_ that.

Eddie Kaspbrak came in just before noon looking for his medication. She was surprised his _Mommy_ let him do it. But he never asked her any questions, apparently, just trotted obediently in and picked up the pills. Did he read the labels? Or go to the library and look up the name on the bottle?

(Would she have, if that were her? And why did her father keep giving them to him? Why didn’t he say —)

Gretta was no expert herself. But she was a pharmacist’s daughter. She knew what an “inert” ingredient was.

And suddenly she was so tired of all of it, of lies in a bottle being rung up at the cash register like they were as harmless as aspirin or vitamins, of watching Kaspbrak carry them in his curled first, his fingers tender as if they were made of glass or diamonds. As though they were essential and he couldn’t do without them. She was tired of being quiet, of staying out of it because she knew that her father wouldn’t approve. She was tired of the adults who were supposed to help but never did. She was tired of dreaming about sewers and water clogged with bodies. She was tired of pretending everything was okay. She was tired of the whole town. If Derry was turned over to the kids it would be — worse, probably. But maybe it would be honest, too.

And there was part of her, a not very nice part, that wanted to see how he would react. It was a part of herself that Gretta would come to regret with time and distance but on that day she had neither of those things. She was fourteen and she was angry and Kaspbrak had the kind of face that made her want to poke at him. Wide eyed and tense and so _obvious_ , somehow. She had the urge to make him flinch.

She folded her magazine on her knee and looked him in the eye. Made him look back, really, since he was trying to look at absolutely anything else.

“You know,” she said, and checked to see if her father could hear her. He couldn’t. “You know it’s all bullshit, right?”

“What is?” he asked.

“Your medication,” she told him. “They’re placebos.”

“What does placebo mean?” he asked, and Jesus, Jesus Christ he didn’t even know what that was. No wonder. No fucking wonder.

“Placebo means bullshit,” she said, and waited for the truth to sink in.

It did, and it wasn’t as satisfying as Gretta had hoped. He looked down, his mouth unsure and worried. He wasn’t paying attention anymore.

“No friends, huh?” she asked, and he turned to her again, confused. “Your cast,” she clarified, which was white and blank as an unmarked sheet of paper. “No signatures or anything? So sad.” She made a crying fist, up by her eyes, the way babies did.

“I didn’t want to get it dirty,” he said, a little defensive, and of course he didn’t. He started to walk away, apparently done with her, and his medication, and all of it.

“I’ll sign it for you,” she said, in sugared tones, and that got him to come back. It always did, with boys. They were remarkably easy in many ways. He even smiled at her.

For a second Gretta thought about writing something really nice. Maybe drawing a heart. It would make his whole week. Maybe his whole summer. But then she thought about what the reaction would be. He’d tell people she did it. He’d probably tell everyone. That was what boys did. None of them could keep their mouths shut. And then she would have to put up with people saying she had a crush on Kaspbrak, or some garbage, and she’d never be able to derail the rumor.

So she wrote ‘loser’ instead, all in big capitals, L-O-S-E-R, and kept her eyes on his the whole time she did it. She punctuated her statement with her gum, wet and pink and stuck to that pristine cast, unmistakable and unmissable, and a wink. And when his face fell — when he did walk away with his head down and his shoulders stiff — that wasn’t as much fun as she thought it was going to be either.

 

 

Gretta emerged from the gas station with a bottle of cream soda in her hand. The usual suspects were parked outside, their cars gleaming under the streetlights. But not Henry Bowers. Not Patrick Hockstetter. Not Belch and Vic. They never would be again. It had been a long summer and now it was over. Gretta shivered in the heat.

Her own nightmares had stopped. The disappearances had too, at least for now. It was only in the waking hours that she thought of them, all those missing kids, the phone call, the voice from the house. Her sleep, strangely, was undisturbed.

Her friends would be back soon. School would start up again. She couldn’t wait. So much time alone had divorced her from her context. She felt unsure of herself. Unfamiliar in her own skin. Her Mom would probably have called it growing up if Gretta had asked, which she didn’t.

Strings of kids went in and out of the door, candy and chips and other favorite items of junk food clutched in their hands. A guy in overalls was gassing up his truck. A couple of tourists, lost on the way to somewhere better, read a map spread across the hood of their car. And Beverly was there, drinking a slushie and leaning back against an empty newspaper stand. Coke or Pepsi, judging by the color. Maybe Root Beer.

She caught Gretta looking and looked right back. Smirked. Drank loudly through her straw. Gretta turned faintly pink and hated every second of it. It was a girl instinct, she thought, to know that she was less herself when she was _by_ herself. To smell blood in the water.

“So where are your goons?” Beverly asked.

“They’re called friends,” Gretta said. “You might not know what that is.”

“Really,” Beverly said, flatly. “Because I thought you were supposed to hang out with friends, and I haven’t seen them around much lately. But then, I’ve been kinda busy.”

“Like hanging around B-B-Bill and the rest of those idiots is an accomplishment.”

“Whatever,” said Beverly. “Was it you who wrote on Eddie’s cast?”

Gretta bit her lip. Fuck. She wanted to say: yeah, and so what? Or: he was stupid enough to fall for it. She wanted to get really nasty and insulting. Something was sticking her throat and the words wouldn't come out. She shrugged a shoulder. “Did he say I did?”

Beverly propped her bike against her hip. She didn’t answer the question. “It was a shitty thing to do.”

“And?”

“That’s all I’m saying,” said Beverly. “It was shitty. And I hope you know it was.” She looked — almost disappointed, or something. Which was nuts. They weren’t friends.

“Are you expecting an apology?”

“Nope,” Beverly said. She scuffed one of her sneakered feet on the ground and threw a leg over her bike. It wobbled slightly as pushed against the pedals and turned towards the road; she was steering with one hand and drinking from the slushie with the other. She had a scabbed knee and very pale legs.

Gretta took in the street behind her. It was dark and crossed with shadows. It was also very empty. People were heading out to the highway or the edge of town for a night of cruising. The sidewalks were bare. Gretta was alone.

“ _Wait_ ,” she said.

Beverly looked back over her shoulder, eyebrow cocked, straw between her teeth.

“Let me hold that,” Gretta said. “You’re gonna put it up your nose.”

“Generous of you,” said Beverly with obvious suspicion.

“Safety first,” Gretta said. When that got no response, she tried again. “It’s dark. You could hit something.”

“Are you afraid of the dark?” Beverly asked. It was a weird thing to ask, about her fears. But fear was on the forefront of everyone’s minds. Had been for weeks.

“No,” Gretta said, and she was telling the truth for the most part. She had never feared the turning off of the lights at home. Had never needed a babyish nightlight or bedtime stories. Outside in Derry — that was different. Or it was now.

“Jesus, Marsh,” she said. “There’s a serial killer on the loose. Aren’t you worried?”

“Is that what they’re calling it?”

“What else could it be?”

Beverly shook her head. “I dunno. Lots of things, I guess.”

“We should have a buddy system,” Gretta said. “Like in elementary school. Remember that time our class went to the waterslides?”

“No,” Beverly said. “I couldn’t afford the trip.”

“Oh,” Gretta said.

Beverly handed the slushie to Gretta. It was a gesture of obvious pity, which Gretta didn’t like and also couldn’t do anything about. “Here,” she said. “I’ll walk you home. But that’s all you’re getting. Don’t expect a kiss goodnight.”

“Gross!”

“Relax,” said Beverly, with a laugh. She had a nice laugh. “There are prettier girls if I wanna go that way.”

Gretta tossed her hair back. “There,” she said, “are _not_.”

Bev rode as slowly as she could without having the bike topple over. Gretta still had to jog to keep up sometimes, but that was fine. They didn’t talk a lot, not until they got to Gretta’s gate and Beverly pulled out a pack of cigarettes and offered her one.

“Smooth, Marsh.”

“Yeah, well,” Bev said. “Never let it be said that I don’t have moves.”

They shared the cigarette. It was a strangely intimate act, her mouth where Bev’s had been. She kept thinking about it.

“Why’d you cut your hair off?” she asked.

“I just felt like it,” Beverly said. “I’m guessing you think it looks bad?”

“No,” Gretta said. “It’s okay. You just — I wouldn’t have cut it if I was you.” She remembered all that hair streaming out behind her as she ran down a soccer field, catching the sunlight.

“Thanks for the advice. Should I dye it blonde?”

“Nah,” said Gretta. “You’d only be a pale copy of the original.” She stubbed what was left of the smoke out underneath her sandal and crossed her arms. The sky above them was clear. She could have counted the stars. “So are you really leaving?” She didn’t ask about Beverly’s father.

“Going to live with my Aunt.”

“It’s going to be weird,” Gretta said. “You being gone.”

Beverly frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know,” Gretta said. “You were always here.” Always on the periphery of Gretta’s vision, just out of reach. “It’ll be weird.”

“Everything’s weird,” said Beverly. “Are you saying you’re going to miss me?” She grinned when she said it, her shoulder bumping Gretta’s, a companionable smile that probably didn’t mean anything and certainly not what Gretta apparently wanted it to mean, because that was when she lost her mind and leaned over and kissed Beverly Marsh full on the mouth.

She broke away almost immediately, her hands over her face in humiliation. Bev didn’t have to push her away. Gretta did all that herself. She didn’t wait for the inevitable rejection.

“Are — are you okay?” Beverly asked. Her eyes were wide and her chest was rising and falling rapidly.

“Fuck off,” Gretta said. “Leave me alone.”

“I’m not the one who —”

“Dyke!” Gretta spat out. She wanted to take it back the second she said it. It was already too late; Beverly was red-faced and furious. She was spinning away with her knuckles tense and white. She was picking her bike up and getting on it.

“You know what?” she said, her eyes bright and shiny. “I’m so fucking glad to be getting out of Derry, and I am so fucking glad to be getting away from you.”

The wheels of her bike kicked up gravel as she sped away. A rock flicked Gretta’s leg and left a spot of blood behind; she would find it later, would wash the dirt out in the bathtub.

Her father was up when she entered the house. He was reading the newspaper by lamplight in the living room. “Hi, honey,” he said. “Who were you out with so late?”

Gretta wanted to cry. She wanted to throw up. “I was with Bev Marsh,” she said.

He blinked and took his reading glasses off to swap them for his regular ones. “I didn’t know you were friends.”

“We aren’t,” she said. “She’s moving.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Why?” Gretta asked. She whirled towards him, her eyes stinging. “Because you won’t get to look down her shirt again?”

“ _Gretta_ ,” he said, shocked. He got up and the newspaper fell out of his lap. His glasses were on all crooked. She wanted to slap them off his face. He was just like all the rest of them. “I did not bring you up to speak to me that way!”

“Fuck you, _Daddy_ ,” she said, and ran for her room. Thundered up the stairs heedless of her mother’s headaches or the neighbor’s precious beauty sleep.

He followed her. He actually yelled at her, and he never yelled. “Get back down here!” he said. She didn’t, and they faced off across the doorway of her bedroom.

He was pointing at her, and his hand was shaking. “Listen to me, young lady,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but you better start explaining. And fast.”

Gretta, at fourteen, could not have explained what was wrong with her. She could not have explained that she now understood she was living in a world of men. She could not have explained that she was not safe in that world. And she could not explain that it was men like him who built the cages girls like her lived in.

So she reached for the only words she had left.

“I hate you,” she said, and she closed the door in his face.

 

 

 

 


End file.
